Initially I just wanted to do one song, one final farewell to Portland, OR after almost 20 years of casting my shadow there. I sat on it for awhile…and then awhile longer. Getting a family of seven packed to move across the country was more time consuming and stressful than I had wanted to admit to myself. Late into the night on February 17, Ash Wednesday, I finally wrote that song. I was sitting in the darkened kitchen with no intention to pray or to fast when my mind wandered to a friend I have never and will never meet: Warren Zevon. The more I thought about Warren the more I missed him. I missed his reverence to irreverence, his camaraderie with the both the sacred and profane, his ability to wink at the devil while kissing an angel. I actually got a little emotional. That’s when, The Reaper, started to happen. Songs like that seem to come easily. That’s what some people call Inspiration, or, The Muses. Maybe that’s what it is. I always just think of it as a job or a sport. Lebron James doesn’t wait for the muses to win games. He lives his life in such a way that every time he steps onto a basketball court his mind and body are ready to perform at the highest level possible. I try to live my life so that the song is always there; it’s there before I ever sit down to write it.
Recording commenced the following day in my studio that was now just a pile of boxes. I had packed up everything except my two cheapest mics and a cheap mixer from the 70’s, my cheapest guitar, and my cheapest bass plugged into my old Sears amp from the 60’s. My intention was to do something lo-fi, something that wouldn’t sound like my usual albums made with my top shelf gear. The result was mixed. Yes, placed side by side with some of my other albums in this project it becomes clear that this album doesn’t have the fidelity of the others, but, for better or for worse, Swan Song still sounds like me. I had to ask myself, “What am I doing with all these boxes of gear? Am I that good that I can make great sounding records with the cheapest gear or am I that bad that I sound like crap no matter how good or bad the gear is?” It’s been an existential crisis.
The Reaper is at once an homage to Warren Zevon and a goodbye to Portland, sincere in its love and sadness while smiling coyly and flipping the bird. Take your hands off me/I’m leaving now/spare your bullets/I’ll die of something anyhow. Those lines somehow encapsulated everything I wanted to say. I probably should have stopped there. Who am I kidding? With this project of releasing 12 albums in such a short amount of time I threw the adage of “leave ‘em wanting more” out the window at the get-go. One song becomes two and two becomes seven and now it’s an album, a farewell address in seven parts, a hodgepodge of memories and mythos.
If there is a song that is purely autobiographical it is, All God’s Sinners. I want fame but all God’s sinners know me all too well. I suppose I am not a prima donna as nothing ever feels big or incredible in the moment. Looking back and telling the stories, though, makes things legendary; mistakes become mythology, minor successes become the big bang. Everything is fish stories, tall tales, and everyone is Pecos Bill, Calamity Jane. That’s All God’s Sinners: minor anecdotes forgotten by all but a few this minstrel attempted to make legendary by putting into a song. There really was a rocking horse on my roof. You should have seen it when it fell. It was pushed…
I write a bit about the political discord in Portland on this album. Kittens of War remembers the feelings at the women’s march right after Trump was elected while RIP, City contemplates the intensity and destruction of downtown Portland during the protests and riots at the hight of the BLM movement. Portland seemed transformed. A lot of people said the entire feel of city had changed. I was not under the spell of such false nostalgia. Portland was always an active volcano waiting to erupt. When the earth makes things they tend to stick around awhile. When people make things they tend to disappear with relative quickness, sometimes evolving into something unrecognizable, other times going extinct. Humans are just a fad, really. There’s a river sifting all the dirt/Someday soon there’ll be no trace of us.
Skidmore Fountain is once again autobiographical (in its slanted way). I wanted something that signaled my migration from the Pacific Northwest to the banks of the Tennessee River so I tried to play guitar like Keith Richards doing his southern country blues rock thing and tried to sing like I was in, The Band. No surprises, please/I’ve got too far to run/I’m trading northern lights/for southern river song. The song gets a wondrous assist from, Johnny London, on lead guitar and, Bryan Daste, on pedal steel. The song wouldn’t have amounted to much without their talents. Sometimes as a producer I have the vision and faith that someone else will make it better. Faith is usually rewarded.
The Shanghai Tunnels is pure Portland mythology. Folks can tour the tunnels that go from business and hotel basements down to the docks. Stories of people getting shanghaied using the tunnels are probably all false, but it’s a good story. Here I attempt a music version of something like Edgar Allen Poe’s, Cask of Amontillado, luring a victim down to the basement, down to trouble.
After the complex theatricality of The Shanghai Tunnels we give final adieu with the completely stripped down title track, Swan Song. Factually irrelevant, Swan Song is emotionally autobiographical to a fault, all about impermanence, the comings and goings of life. We’re all transients, tramps, and vagabonds to the universe. Here today, gone tomorrow. Danelle steals the show as always, as is fitting. I wrote Swan Song not only to be an emotional closer to the album, but also as one last song to sing with my musical partner in crime before setting off across the country. Cities are a dime a dozen, but a good singing partner is a difficult find. Before leaving I gave Danelle a microphone. Thank goodness we’re living in the future and she can send me her voice from a million miles away.
Personel:
All music and lyrics by: Simon Eli Milliman
Recorded, mixed, and mastered by: Simon Eli Milliman
Vocals, guitars, bass, keys, synths, drums, orchestrations: Simon Eli Milliman
Vocals on The Reaper and Swan Song: Danelle Dullem
Pedal Steal on Skidmore Fountain: Bryan Daste
Lead Guitar on Skidmore Fountain: Johnny London
